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Spaniard with a sting
There is an art to developing
motorcycle model names that work, and Spanish marque
Montesa's dual-purpose 250 from the seventies
provides a great example
(Guy 'Guido' Allen, February 2025)
It's not every day you get a two-stroke Spaniard dropping
in for a visit and we felt we had to share this one – a
1975 Montesa King Scorpion 250. What a name. Not just any
scorpion, but King Scorpion!
The bike is a restomod
by mate Paul Newbold, who has been responsible for
reviving a string of bikes, and the odd
car, over the years.
A long-term and
influential inmate of the enormously successful SR500
Club Australia, he has also helped out on a
number of my projects including the
Cousin Russell SR.
As for the Montesa, it
claimed a mighty 22hp for 1975 and included the new
autolube system that mixed oil into the fuel for you.
In the interests of
practicality, Paul is currently running it on premix
with a 12 volt electrical system rather than the
original 6. He's also gone for different guards, with
a low version on the front rather than the high
trail-bike style it would have been delivered with.
He reckons pretty much
everything on this series Montesa costs $450:
instruments, ignition upgrade, chroming...you name it.
It is kind of the nature of restos that they set you
unexpected challenges, often to your wallet.
Something we like is
he's had a relatively light touch on many aspects of
the cosmetics that by now are showing a bit of
dignified age.
Montesa is one of those
'lost' brands, which would sink without trace if it
weren't for machines like this being revived. Despite
the obscurity, the joy is that once you have simple
air-cooled single-cylinder two-strokes like this
running they should be very easy to look after.
Meanwhile the delicate
looks and the light handling, with the cackling
performance from the air-cooled single, are evocative
of an era that is long gone.
See the 1970 Cycle
World magazine review of the first of the King
Scorpions.
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